Sessions at Mozilla Festival 2012 about physical-web-mozfest on Sunday 11th November Full Festival Day

As the Internet of Things matures, sensors will continue to proliferate - in public spaces, measuring air quality, noise pollution, weather and more; and in private hands, where some of the same things will be measured and some different - biometrics, health, energy consumption and so forth. Governments are already planning their ecosystems, and more choices become available to consumers every day.

But how will these things be interconnected to achieve their potential? There is a real opportunity here to empower citizenry and improve our way of life:

Enable people to understand and measure their quality of life, and decide for themselves what that entails

Join us for a brainstorming session where we'll develop ideas for a very simple machine that will read and display (highly selective) information from the web. This activity requires understanding the implications of the available data but also allows a lot of creativity in the output presentation which might include any of the following: LEDs, simple sounds (beeps), or moving parts (via a small stepper motor).

Never fear - there will be lots of of support as we browse open data sources, share findings including code snippets, and examine a simple, functioning information display device that can access and display next vehicle information from the Web. We'll have some electronics including arduinos and prototyping "breadboards" (or pre-fabbed arduino shields) on hand in various stages of assembly.

Participants will have an opportunity to assemble the display devices and to program them using their computers.

Take-aways:

Learn about web "pages" that are written for machines, not people (for example, "Open Data" for Public Transport next vehicle information, published as XML)

Make a physical "web page" (using arduino) that displays (? you decide) information

Build a tactile learning activity with CodeCards. We'll start with a demo of CodeCards to show what it is and how it can be used, before brainstorming ideas for tactile learning tools, relating to both the web and computing as well as more traditional (read: boring) subjects. Then we'll have a quick crash-course in developing with CodeCards, before we start building stuff.

Our goal is to teach and motivate people to hack in the real world, helping them make the transition from users to makers and construct things that have the ability to change (and better) our everyday lives, using easy-to-use tools like the Arduino microcontroller and a variety of sensor and actuators. We will show how to use and program the Arduino to get you started on your next interactive installation, home automation, robotic design or hobby electronics project.